Laughter
by timelucked
Summary: Set during Southern Raiders, when the gang has escaped and made camp elsewhere. What will it take for Zuko to break through to Katara? Why does he keep being reminded of his folly at Ba Sing Se? But somehow, he will get through to her. Laughter heals all.


**A/N: I decided to take the Zutara100 theme challenge onto myself. So here goes?**

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><p>"Well, I could…chase you around a while. Throw some fireballs and try to capture you. You whoosh around and dodge," the Fire Prince ducked his head and smiled into his drab rice bowl. "Like old times."<p>

The group burst into laughter – Sokka slapped his knee and rocked with his chortles, Aang bubbled with laughter, Suki's giggles tinkled along the night air, and Toph brayed at points like a caramule. His firelight illuminated each face, bright with patches of shadow thrown onto their features, making the sparkling gleams of their eyes brighter. The corner of his lip tugged up as he grew more confident, happier. Accepted.

"Ha. Ha." A young girl insincerely snarled, glaring at the man from across the burning hearth as simmers rippled his silhouette.

The fire cast her face in shaded and cruel hues of darkness, only the down tilt of her mouth was visible and even that seemed to contain a darkness on its own. He winced and shrunk in on himself, slumping his shoulders and covering his amber-light eyes with ragged bangs. He suddenly found his white-knuckled grasp intriguing.

An awkward tension descended and threw the group into uncompromisable silence. Sokka coughed thickly into his fist as a break to the silence. It cut the frigidness of the situation like the crackle of splintered wood in the self-made pit. His sister scoffed in disgust and rose, storming off into a dim clearing a short trek away. The Avatar stared after her, a concerned and defeated frown deepening his youthful features. His wide, gray eyes whipped to his fire bending instructor, standing woodenly to his left. His dark eyes were trained on the retreating azure back and swishing hair of the girl who acted scorned. His head lowered, chin tucked into the dip of his exposed collarbone, the twist of his lip absolutely feral as his eyes shimmered to reflect the fire that snapped beneath him. He clenched teeth and fist by his sides and marched after her, blazing an imaginary trail behind him.

"Uh, Sokka? Do you think it's safe for him to—"

"An angry Zuko, alone with my crazy sister?" the boy shrugged obliviously. "Eh, I don't really see the problem."

The Prince of Fire shot a glare back, knowing full well they wouldn't be able to see his curling rage, but otherwise ignored them. He felt like the comet about to come – chasing an elusive horizon that he would never be able to grace. But Zuko would get to the bottom of this inherent anger she possessed toward him. He would take it upon himself share it. Let it bubble until it frothed out into the air – settled.

He rose up the clearing, a grassy plateau circled by two thick slates of obsidian rock. Other structures spiked out of the ground like spears, pointing accusingly at the son of flame. He gave a noncommittal glance to the ribbed slab pointed like a spire on a Fire Nation nobility's tiered manse.

As he stepped through the door-like opening, he immediately felt enclosed with the Water Tribe girl, away from the parties view. Only the moon gazed down in a watchful stare. Yue – Sokka's apparent ex – bathed Katara in silver, ephemeral light. Her skin faintly glowed in the cool embrace, iridescent light surrounding her figure. Zuko's heart stopped, mesmerized at the sight. She stared out over the cliff, studying the flow and tumbling tide of her element, rubbing her hands over her arms as swangoose flesh bristled her tanned skin.

_I could probably keep her warm. _He thought dazedly, head swinging to the side as he was immobilized to do little else but gawk. _If I ran my hands along her arms, I could bend some heat into my palms and –_ The prince stopped mid-thought, head flinching. Where had that thought come from? He shoved it in the mental category of "Practicality" seeing as if she were lost in a tundra and he was a lone provider, he would have used his heat to warm her. Like anyone else. Even if she did hate him. Though if he thought about it, them being in a barren waste of nothing more than snow and ice, she'd be more acclimated and probably would have a tigerwolf pelt parka on hand. But still. It was only the civil thing to do.

His attention refocused as he heard the angry puff escape her nose in jolt of breath. She raised her arms before her and he saw a wave past her body and far below crest and subside, rise and fall like a persons breath. He wondered at the two-sidedness to her element. How similar it was to his.

Fire burned with life. It warmed like the blood pumped through the heart. It gave life. Light. Heat. But it also seared it away, an instant incineration of a person leaving behind only the past and memories. And those too would scatter and fade like the aftermath of ash on the wind.

Water also gave life. It sang in the bodies, in the stream of thick life that coursed in channels and passages beneath the skin. It nurtured and healed, ailed the sick and warmed the heart like a healthy brew of jade tea. But it also stole the life it protected. If you went to far in its unyielding grasp, you were helpless. It could close you in its palm and crush you. Drowning, suffocating in its essence – the very essence that once gave you life. It could roll you inside and out, and freeze you until you burst or died from shock.

Immediately, he felt chilled and intimidated to be so secluded by a master of this unstable and disobedient element. At any moment, she could rouse the ocean from its complacent slumber, rush him and force the breath out his choking lungs. He swallowed hard, mouth curving in on itself as he grimaced at the thought of painful and subsequent death. Only had he ever thought of death in Fires' arms, be it on a pyre like all in his nation – from the laziest and fattest noble, to the bone-thin and worked farmer in the sizzling fields – or blasted to charred cinders by a relative.

Never had he depicted another element to take him. None seemed worthy, and none he deemed strong enough to best him. It was true that a rock could easily crush him. But not before he melted it to a flesh-peeling magma and blasted it back on his foe. And the air could be taken from his body, boiling his blood like jook on a stove until he combusted. But the Air Nomads were peaceful and none would ever use their flightful power to harm anyone. Besides the Avatar was the last remaining bender of that kind, and as a small child that radiated innocence, he would never succumb to that ultimate test of power.

Water…especially not something as vile and filthy as water, a substance used to wash feet or heal boils and puckering blisters that spewed puss. Not something so disgusting and polluted as that could overthrow him. Extinguish his flame for a time, perhaps. But never anything more.

And yet as he saw the glistening pools of power graze the shores almost intimately, he knew there was a beauty to it. The mysticism of an art piece, or form, that no one could honestly tame. As the famous Earth Kingdom poet, Xiao Dji, wrote: there was nothing more boundless, than the sea.

The no-longer-crowned Prince sighed. Her hearing seemed to be as acute as his as she whirled around with a stunned gasp. Her eyes turned to slits as soon as she took the sight of him in. the ferocity of her glare snapped him back to the present, and out of the possibilities of a future taken from him. Though if he botched things with her here and now, death by water was a plausible concept. She would probably just explain his disappearance away as a tragic accident – "Poor Zuko, '_accidentally'_ fell off the cliff.

Deep down Zuko knew she was kind. He saw it in the furtive loks she gave to anyone assembled around her. Never to Zuko, though – but he always watched, and he always saw.

"This isn't fair. What is it with you? What is your problem?" the skin creased between his furrowed brows. "Everyone else seems to have accepted me. Why can't you?"

Her face twisted, livid, jumping from anger to pure rage.

"My _problem_? My _problem_?" she snapped, voice raising octaves and pitches higher than it should.

The sound was worse than when Kibishii-sensei at the Fire Nation academy scratched her talon-like nails down the chalkboard to grab any child's wayward attention. Zuko's face ticked, inching back and shying away from the sound.

"_You're_ my _problem_! Everyone else might have bought into your 'good guy' act," she mocked him with quotation marks, swiveling around to her ocean (probably trying to calm herself with the soothing effect water generally seemed to have with its benders) Her arms crossed haughtily across her closed chest. "But we both know you've had some trouble with the truth in the past. Let's not forget Ba Sing Se." she turned her head to the side, her profile the only indication of acknowledgment at the fire bender.

His mouth dropped; face slack, as he saw a dew of wetness bead at the corner of her suddenly sapphire eyes. And suddenly, he was flung. Dragged into the recesses of his own mind. He fell and landed painfully on his back, spittle flying as he tried to cry out. Everything shone in dim and faded green, like a summer night where all the Fireflies in his nation come out and twinkle along with the stars so high, dancing with the breeze that carried them through the woods and forests and streets.

His pulse jumped as he recognized the gleaming crystals protruding out from the craggy surface of the cave's wall. He was beneath the Great City again. Ba Sing Se. he saw the shimmering image his mind projected of himself on that day. He was sitting on a raised dais of yellowing stone, hands together between his knees. Everything was silent. But to see that look upon his own face – to see himself frowning and closed off to keep the tears and taste of disgust he knew too well sealed in – was enough to make him look away.

This moment was his third regret in life – the third out of hundreds, _thousands_! He hated the weak boy he saw there. Hated seeing the water bender fall to her knees and cry out of loss and anger.

Anger at the loss of her mother.

Anger at the loss of her childhood, the same he was denied.

Anger at the loss of her home. Her self.

Anger at all the world had taken from her and those she cared about.

No, not the world. The Fire Nation. Even still, that was wrong. It wasn't the Fire Nation – not the one he had read fables and saw overrated plays about. That storybook nation of ages since passed couldn't have stolen what wasn't there's to take. It was his father's nation, and his father's father's father's nation, that took away everything.

And just as quickly as he was sucked in, he was thrown back out, struggling against the images that collided into one throw of color and rushing sound. It imitated a wave going tidal, the foam of his youth and days long gone splashing past his mind's eye.

"Everyone trusts you now. But _I_ was the first to." He could hear her purse her lips into a thin line, eyebrow rising in fury as he burst through the fabrics of his past. He wheezed silently, body heaving unnoticed by her. She continued on her verbal rampage, whipping him with words lace in as paralyzing a venom as on a xirxiu's tongue.

"You betrayed me – and so help me, if you harm my family again…spirits only _know_ what I am capable of doing!"

A few moments went by as she stewed and steamed. She whipped around finally.

"Say something!"

Her body jerked to a stop, face transforming from anger to confusion.

Zuko's face was lit by a fire that glowed in the palm he held at chest level. In his opened hand, a miniature figure, about the size of two lychee seeds, danced and swayed. He lifted his focused concentration and studied the stunted water bender with a cool blankness.

"Is…is that," she took a few involuntary steps closer, finger bent awkwardly to point at herself. "Me?"

He gave a subtle, cautious nod.

Right there in the rightful heir to the Fire Nation's throne stood a little Katara. She was a fiery visage, but that was definitely her. She stood in her water bending stance with one leg bent and the other flexed out to the side. Her arms of flame flowed as fluidly before her as water, sinuous trails traveling from each side with her upper body, and up and down like a painter's elegant brush. They were quick motions that lighted orange, red, and yellow. She bent at the waist to stare at the small her, helpless to the grin that enveloped her astounded and giddy features.

She never knew fire could be so beautiful – and not just for the sake of it being herself that executed tiny bending forms. This was artful mastery of an element. This was a masterpiece. The control he must have had, to encompass such detail in something so small and something as lively as a flame. He had gotten her down to the hem of her Water Tribe apparel. Even her hair loopies! Before meeting the Sun Warriors and learning about fire's true beauty, Katara doubted he could have done something as magnificent and captivating as this. Rage would not have been able to sculpt something as tactful as this.

The only other time she saw something as entrancing and breathtaking as this was when she, Aang, and Sokka went to a Fire Nation "Fire Days" festival – held in a nearby town to their camp. An entertainer, a man named Malu, had called a be-masked Katara up to his stage. He strapped her in a chair and began his act, voice loud and patronizing to the audience's rapt delight. He blew fire through his fist and the plumed cloud of heat formed the scaled skeleton of a mighty dragon. Katara had been fascinated, enthralled. And terrified. The massive amount of fire was frightening, and wonderful.

Zuko's brow twitched and a tiny ball of flame floated out of fire-Katara's hands, levitating and shifting shape into a flowing line. A stream of fire/water. It traveled around Katara's head, orbiting like the earth around the suns heated pull, then retracted back into her flickering wrist with a slight twist of Zuko's. Katara's indigo gaze climbed up the length of his chest, the dull colors darker in the night, until she found his angular face, starting with that pointed chin. The absolute smallest of smiles touched his lips softly, near reverently. He stared down at her with an impassive and clean look. He caught her brilliant beam, the white against her orange-lighted face a beautiful contrast in the glow of his piece. The tips of his lips coiled higher and the light of confidence glinted in his eyes as sinisterly as his dao swords.

He meant no harm by the expression, but to Katara (still unforgiving and as stubborn as an earth bender on occasion) everything about the fire bender was cruel. Her happiness extinguished as quickly as a candle blown out. She reared up quickly and shoved her hands out at his shoulders with a piercing glare. His face remained blank, aggravating her further.

"This changes nothing," she growled, bumping past him and jostling the arm he still held her form in. Her image flickered as the air rippled around it, disturbed by her sudden departure. She stormed off down the slope and back into the dark camp – everyone else having settled into their tents at the late hour.

As soon as she was out of his sigh, she ducked behind one of the rocks and began stomping her feet, planting them into the ground. She clamped a hand to her mouth to cover her fit of uncontrollable laughter. She could _not_ let him hear her giggling. She was crazy, insane! Ow, her stomach was starting to cramp. Coughing delicately into her hand, she composed herself and continued her poised walk to her tent.

He followed her retreat until she disappeared down the hill, frowning at his shoulder, warm from her contact. With a flourish of his long fingers, he circled his wrist and the flame of his design dissipated in his compressed fist, leaving him in total darkness.

He would get her acceptance yet… he thought to himself as he stared out towards the ocean. The colliding waves seemed to call his name like a hushed mantra. He laughed out his nose, stomach contracting with the movement, and headed back into camp. There was someone he needed to talk to.

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><p><strong>AN: I hope I portrayed the fire-Katara scene well. It was such a great image in my head, I hope I gave it enough justice. **

**Ok, so. For those of you who take Japanese or know the language/culture or what have you, Zuko's sensei's name was a pun. A lame one, I know. Kibishii means 'strict' in Japanese. And I know in my class, my sensei has a picture of a teacher yelling at a student for the term "Kibishii" **

**Also note: Malu is in fact, the actual name of the performer and the festival the gang goes to in Season 1, the Deserter episode, is really called the "Fire Days" festival. **

**Lychee Seeds: I **_**think**_ **that is how it is spelled. This was an actual nut/berry in the avatar world. In fact! It was what Pipsqueak ate when Sokka got them caught in the Fire Nation traps. He asks Smellerbee if she was going to eat hers and she threw them at him, which he only too happily grinned at. Haha, the Freedom Fighters. Gotta love 'em. **

**Oh and some knowledge! It was learned in chemistry that if you suck the air out of something, it will condense and/or combust. If a human were to be sealed in a vacuum (and no, not the Hoover kind. The space, there-is-no-air kind) their blood would boil and they would die. And 'splode. **

**Alrighty! On that note, I leave you. And you know what you can leave me? A review! Yay~ Whoo~ Ahhhhhhhhhhhh! The crowd screams for more! **


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